Playwright · British · 1874 – 1965 · 86 quotes
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
W. Somerset Maugham
Playwright · British · 1874 – 1965
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know."
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
Have common sense and stick to the point.
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
The crown of literature is poetry.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
